Lion Air director suspended as fuselage still proves difficult to find

“We will also intensify the ramp checks on the Lion Air planes,” Budi said, referring to checks that regulators make of airline companies to make sure flight operations are being carried out safely and in accordance with regulations.

On the third day of the search, Indonesia’s military chief Hadi Tjahjanto said a search and rescue team had found part of the body of the plane that crashed into the sea off Jakarta, presumably killing all 189 on board.

“We strongly believe that we have found a part of the fuselage of JT610,” he told TV One, however this was not confirmed by later in the afternoon.

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Another part of Indonesia’s search and rescue apparatus believes they have located the “ping” from the black box of crashed flight JT610.

Didi Hamzar, the director of preparedness and search and rescue agency Basarnas, said his people had collected 49 body bags and had given them to the police.

The search area was widened on Wednesday to 15 nautical miles, with  1000 rescuers involved.

Family members were allowed to search among the recovered debris, which included baby booties, bags and other personal items.

“Of course we demand answers, that’s our sister, (my mother’s) daughter, our next of kin,” said Redhi Yudha Perdana, who was among dozens of families waiting for news of their loved ones.

“If we knew of problems, we would have postponed the trip. Who would want to lose their loved ones? Who would board a broken plane? Lives are at stake. Now what we wait is for [search and rescue agency] Basarnas’ answers about my sister’s body, and Lion Air’s responsibility to their pbadengers.”

Indonesia has deployed “pinger locators” to try to locate the plane’s black boxes, as the badpit voice recorder and flight data recorder are known, at the crash site.

“[On Tuesday] afternoon, the team had heard a ping sound in a location at 35 metres depth,” Haryo Satmiko, the deputy chief of the national transport safety panel, told Reuters.”This morning, at 5am, the team has gone back to dive at the location.”

Forty-eight divers were preparing to go to area believed to be the location of the black box, and, based on the “ping” sound, rescuers had divided the search area into eight locations.

The head of Indonesia’s National Transport Safety Committee, Soejanto Tjahjono, said the locator beacon would transmit pings every 0.9 seconds if it was genuinely coming from the black box.

The object believed to be the fuselage of the aircraft measured 16 metres by 10 metres by five metres and that the rescuers had expanded the search area, according to a report on Indonesia’s Kompas TV.

Representatives of Boeing, the manufacturer of the 737 Max 8 plane that crashed, arrived in Jakarta at 1pm local time on Wednesday (5pm AEDT) and were planning to immediately meet with executives from Lion.

Lion Air director of safety and security Daniel Putut said the airline had so far received nine of the 50 planes it had ordered from Boeing. He suggested the airline might rethink taking delivery of the other planes.

”It will go through an evaluation process, we have a lot of questions. Big question marks.”

Lion Air co-founder and chief executive Rusdi Kirana, who is also Indonesia’s ambbadador to Malaysia, fired back at the Australian government’s decision to ban civil servants from flying with the airline while the investigation into the cause of the accident is underway.

Mr Rusdi said that Lion Air’s culpability for the accident had not yet been proven, and if the airline was exonerated, the Australian government should reverse its decision.

He added that the ban would not have a big impact on the airline, as its business was primarily domestic. A Lion Air offshoot, Batik Air, does however operate flights between Perth and Denpasar, Bali.

Meanwhile, the family members of those aboard the fateful Lion Air flight grieved for their loved ones and, after providing DNA to help identify bodies and body parts, continued to wait on Wednesday for news.

Mrs Nuke (who gave only one name) said her daughter, Puspita Eka Putri, was on the Lion Air pbadenger list and had been going to Pangkal Pinang for work.

The grieving mother cried and she related the story of her last contact with her daughter.

“She sells beauty products, she was going there to demonstrate the products. That morning I just texted her to ask where she was. She texted back saying that she was on the road, already on her way. I didn’t even get to say goodbye, I didn’t get to take her there.”

“I knew she was on it, when I keep trying to contact her phone, but I couldn’t.”

“A child is not something you own, Allah just left them in your care. Now Allah has taken her back. As a parent, you give it your best, but Allah is the best. Allah had better plans for her, you have to let them go.”